Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Peter Pan Complex

You may or may not notice that I talk about silly little animation sketches that I make while taking a break from my serious animations. Well, you should know that what I mean by "serious" is that I have put a lot of time into planning everything out and making artistic choices and designing sets and lighting it well and editing it in programs like After Effects. (As opposed to animating on a whim, making things up as I go along, and editing in iMovie.)

One of my serious animations lately had been for my documentary class. All semester I've been working on what will eventually be a 3 minute long documentary on Peter Pan complexes. Now, this isn't your everyday Ken Burns documentary or photo essay. Not that there's anything wrong with those. My work just tends to be more whimsical than pans and zooms. So why should a documentary be any different? I did, after all, pick a whimsical topic.

So all of this time I have been working on this serious animation this week, here's what I've really been doing:

Serious, huh? Haha, I find it mildly funny that I go to college to play with toys. But there's something I find super relaxing about it. Usually, I open frame by frame or set up a tripod to do an animation sketch to get me "in the zone." After doing a small pixilation, it's a lot easier for me to think about movement one frame at a time. So then I turn on the lights and get to work!

Sometimes, I wonder what I would have said if someone told me when I was three years old that I would grow up to be an animator making things just like my favorite Sesame Street segments. I think 3 year old me would be ok with that!